1. The Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to methods and systems for creating web pages and, more particularly, to methods and systems for creating web pages that share a common layout and/or functionality.
2. Background and Relevant Art
As the use of the Internet continues to grow, so does the need to develop web pages that are capable of providing desired Internet content. It has been realized that the layout and functionality of a web page can be customized to accommodate various needs and preferences. Nevertheless, it is sometimes desirable to create a variety of different web pages that share a common layout, functionality, or content. For example, it may be desirable for a family of web pages that are hosted by a single party to share a common layout so that each of the web pages includes a common menu bar, header, footer, or other content segments.
Providing a common layout and functionality between related web pages can be useful to facilitate navigation through the web pages and to generally provide a common ‘look’ and ‘feel’ that a visitor can easily grow accustomed to. Propagating the content and functionality between multiple web pages can also reduce the time and effort that is required to develop related web pages because the developer does not have to entirely ‘reinvent the wheel’ for each web page that is developed.
Notwithstanding the aforementioned benefits, however, there are certain inefficiencies and consequences that are also associated with sharing a common layout between multiple web pages. In particular, it can require the developer to redundantly program shared content and functionality into each of the web pages that are created. Accordingly, even though the layout and corresponding programming code that are used by the developer do not have to be ‘reinvented’, they still have to be redundantly copied into each of the corresponding web pages. Additionally, if problems are later discovered in the web pages, it is often necessary for a programmer to individually and redundantly fix the problems that were copied into each of the web pages.
Yet another problem that can be associated with the duplicating of code and content between multiple web pages is that the storage limits of the host system can be filled-up unnecessarily with duplicative content. In other words, a large segment of content or code can undesirably strain the storage capacity of the host when the content segment is redundantly and simultaneously stored for each related web page.